A new golden age?

Second-straight SEC trophy would bring comparison to early '80s

University of Georgia head football coach Mark Richt talks with Jefferson Pilot play-by-play announcer Dave Neal on Friday during a media session in Atlanta about tonight's Southeastern Conference Championship game with LSU. Richt said recently it was the possibility that Georgia could return to the glory days of the 1980s that made the head coaching job an attractive opportunity.

John Curry/Staff Their names are mentioned now with a degree of reverence. They are the conquering heroes whose gridiron exploits are still treasured two decades later, immortalized in old action photos and radio calls that are still replayed.

That's the lasting legacy of a period that produced three straight Southeastern Conference championships, a national title and four consecutive seasons of 10 wins or more.

The early 1980s remain the golden era of Georgia football, but with Georgia playing for its second straight SEC championship tonight against LSU in the Georgia Dome, are the Bulldogs in the midst of a new golden era?

Twenty years from now, will players like David Greene, David Pollack and Sean Jones be remembered like Herschel Walker, Buck Belue and Kevin Butler under coach Vince Dooley?

''We went through some awfully, awfully good times there in the '80s,'' said Mike Cavan, running backs coach under Dooley from 1975-85 and now a consultant for the Georgia Athletic Association's development office. ''This football team now seems to be on that same track. I see this going on for a long time now here at Georgia.''

Coach Mark Richt has pointed to the Herschel-led teams of the early '80s this season when telling his team that it has a chance to become only the second team in Georgia history to win back-to-back SEC championships.

''We want people to look back on these days and say these were the good old days,'' Richt said this week. ''I just want these guys to experience what it feels like to be a champion.''

Georgia is 23-3 in the last two seasons under Richt and has posted back-to-back 10-win seasons for the first time since 1983.

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Even if a couple of underclassmen leave for the NFL, Georgia should return an experienced squad that should be ranked among the top five teams again in the preseason.

''It's a little bit different nowadays because a lot of guys are going early,'' said CBS analyst Todd Blackledge, who quarterbacked Penn State to a 27-23 win over Georgia in the 1983 Sugar Bowl.

''Back in the '80s, you're probably keeping guys at least four, if not five years. You're building your team a little bit differently. The margin between winning and losing is not very big. A lot of it is mental and expecting to win and having that kind of attitude.''

Georgia, Blackledge continued, has ''never had a talent problem and they should be able to continue to recruit talent. I think that psychological thing they've got right now is that they really think they're good and they expect to win, and you can go a long way with that.''

Richt brought a winning pedigree with him from Florida State, where he was part of a staff that won two national championships and was a perennial power.

Talk of building a dynasty even in the SEC East, however, may be premature considering that Florida continues to have a stranglehold on Georgia in head-to-head meetings and Tennessee still lurks.

''To predict any kind of string in this conference would be foolish,'' Richt said.

Still, heightened expectations are a byproduct of Georgia's success.

''I think we're definitely raising the bar,'' Greene said. ''Going back-to-back. Going to the SEC Championship. We're starting to head in the right direction. We obviously want to be more than that. We want to be a team that competes for the national championship every year.''

SEC football trophy

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Now that Georgia has hit double digits in wins in back-to-back years, anything less next season is bound to be a disappointment.

''It's like when you're a kid when you get a little tiny toy,'' Pollack said. ''... The first Christmas it's wonderful. The next Christmas you expect something bigger and bigger. That's a good thing. It's good to have people expecting that you should be winning. As long as we're doing that, I think people will be happy.''

Richt came to Georgia, he said, because he saw the success of the early 1980s as an example of the type of prosperity the program had the potential to enjoy in the future.

''History does usually have a way of repeating itself,'' Richt said. ''That was part of the attraction of this job to me to know that Georgia had won SEC championships and national championships. It usually means the resources are there and the ability to do it again is probably there.''

Said Cavan: ''I think that's going to happen here, and certainly when it does, I think we will look at it as another golden era of Georgia football. Hopefully in 15 years, we'll still be in the golden era.''